


The Ghoul

by Vinnocent



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DC Animated Universe, DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Adoption, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Family Drama, Family Feels, Family Secrets, Gen, Gun Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Secret Children, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-04 10:43:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10989309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vinnocent/pseuds/Vinnocent
Summary: Ten years is plenty of time to build a monster…





	1. One Week Since Jason Died

**Author's Note:**

> Haha, yep. Apparently I'm writing three DCU fics at once. Welcome to ADHD, folks. :P
> 
> This fic takes place within the same universe as Junior League, though obviously well-before it. Updates will be inconsistent.

Of all the disturbingly inappropriate things that Alfred Pennyworth has had to do to manage Bruce Wayne’s absolutely insane life, keeping vigil outside the man’s bedroom to wait for the sound of him falling asleep after coupling with a woman is probably one of the most disturbing and inappropriate. That does not keep Alfred from doing it.

Once he hears the sounds of even breathing, he starts the timer. Four hours. Six would be better, but he cannot wait that long.

He goes to Thomas’s old trophy room, one of the few rooms in the mansion that Bruce never ever visits. That’s because in addition to several mounted trophies, the room is also full of antique firearms. Well, it had been full, once. Of course, every time someone comes around asking for a donation for charity auction, Bruce immediately suggests one of Thomas’s guns － so long as it wouldn't be inappropriate for the charity in question, such as the Gotham Widows of Gun Violence. And to be fair, most of the charities Bruce donates to would be inappropriate. Nevertheless, Thomas’s once grand collection has dwindled over the years to just three pieces that Alfred has refused to remove. He tells Bruce that this is because they were Thomas’s favorites, which gets a grunt of acknowledgement and change of subject. The truth is that they were the most serviceable members of the collection (and Alfred has kept them in such condition that they may continue to be referred to as such), and, unlike Bruce, he knows that a Batarang is _not_ the best defense.

Still, he’s never needed the best defense. Attacks on the house are rare, and Bruce is usually able to handle it.

But right now, he’s obviously in no condition to handle it.

Alfred takes the rifle down off its mount and then goes to find the corresponding bullets and cleaning kit. He has four hours to kill until Bruce enters the second-longest, second-deepest stage of REM sleep. But he cannot wait six hours.

Four hours later, Alfred stands in his master’s bedroom and prods the sleeping, naked woman therein in the shoulder with the rifle barrel. “Get up,” he hisses. He’s got _maybe_ twenty minutes to handle this and just because Bruce is in his deepest phase of sleep does not mean that he cannot be woken. He will have _a lot_ to explain if Bruce wakes.

When she doesn’t stir, he prods her harder. “ _Get. Up. Now._ ”

Grunting, Talia al Ghul slowly turns over in the bed, out from under Bruce’s arm, and blinks up at Alfred, who raises the gun to aim at her head. She cocks an unconcerned eyebrow. “Hello?” she says. “Did you need something?”

“Get the hell out of this house,” Alfred orders. “Now.”

She wipes the sleep out of her eyes, then raises herself up on her elbows to peer more closely at him. He keeps his aim careful. A slow grin spreads across her vicious face. “Or what? You’ll blow my brains out all over him and his bed?” she purrs. “I’m sure that will help him with all his precious _trauma_.” She gives a fake pout, then reaches over and _strokes Bruce’s hair in his sleep_. Alfred really wants to shoot her. “Poor thing needs comfort in these hard times.”

“I won’t tell you again,” Alfred warns.

Talia comes so close to laughing at that, she has to clamp a hand over her own mouth to keep from waking Bruce. Alfred really, really wants to shoot her.

“Alright, alright,” she says at last, levity still in her voice. She sits up and makes a shooing motion at him. “Give me enough space to dress, please. Trust me, hailing a cab naked only brings attention from the police, and surely that’s not what you intended?”

Alfred doesn’t reply. He takes two steps back to allow her access to her scattered clothes but keeps the rifle carefully aimed.

“If you had to shoot, how _would_ you ever explain it to him?” she asks as she pulls on her underpants.

“I got the gun because I suspected an intruder in the house and, upon investigation, discovered a snake in his bed. My poor nerves misfired.”

Talia snorts. She pulls up her trousers. “Clever,” she praises. It’s meant to be an insult. It’s meant to hurt him that someone he hates is implying he could think like her. But he doesn’t care. There are many things he would do for his charge. Adult or not, Bruce would always be his charge.

After finding and equipping her bra, shirt, jacket, scarf, shoes, and purse, Talia finally heads out, escorted all the way to the front door by Alfred’s rifle. On the stoop, she turns to him with a smile and says, “You can’t keep him forever, you know.”

Alfred slams the door in her face.

* * *

“What? No, the headstone needs to say the _seventh_ ,” Alfred corrects to the disinterested engraver’s assistant on the other end of the phone. “Are you even－?” He stops abruptly when he becomes aware of Bruce standing behind him. “Er, nevermind. I’ll come by in a few hours to ensure the details myself. … Yes, thank you.”

He hangs up and turns to face his charge, the master of the house, who is leaning against the kitchen doorway looking clearly exhausted and perhaps a bit confused and definitely guilty. “Sir?” he asks.

Bruce rubs his neck uneasily and stares at a space behind Alfred’s head. “Look, I… I just wanted to say that… I’m… I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “For anything I might have done last night. I wasn’t aware I’d gotten _that_ drunk, but I don’t remember much, which isn’t a good sign…”

Alfred blinks at him. His knuckles whiten as he clutches hard at the telephone receiver in his hand. “You… don’t remember last night.”

Bruce shrugs. “I know I haven’t been… handling things,” he struggles. He doesn’t say that he hasn’t been handling things well. He says that he hasn’t handled them. At all. And Alfred only then realizes how true that is. That the only times Bruce had even been involved in the whole procedure was signing a couple checks and then attending the funeral. Alfred had managed absolutely everything else. And he’d done it without thinking. It was instinctive, to try to protect Bruce from his own pain.

It was stupid. There was no protecting him from this.

“Anyway, I know last time I let myself drink that much, you were extremely unhappy with me, and this… this is a shitty time to pull a stunt like that, and I’m sorry. For anything I might have done. Whatever it was.”

What is Alfred supposed to say to that? _Oh, don’t worry, sir, not your fault. Based on the evidence, I believe perhaps it can be accounted for by the beguiling Ms. al Ghul deciding that the night after you buried your son would be a wonderful time to slip you something and worm her way back into your life while your guard was down._ No, what he says is, “You were sick on the carpet.”

“Ah.”

“And it’s fine. Really.”

There’s an awkward silence, and Alfred forces his fingers to slowly release their grip on the phone. Bruce follows his gaze. “So,” he says. “That was the engraver?”

“Er, yes,” Alfred mumbles.

“What’s going on?”

“Oh, um, well, as it turns out, they’re run by a pack of morons who have only stayed in business this long via the sheer demand produced by this godforsaken city,” Alfred tells him. He shoots the telephone an accusatory look. “The, er, backlog is why he doesn’t have one yet.”

“Yeah, I assumed,” says Bruce. Another long silence passes between them, without Bruce moving an inch from where he leans against the door frame, but in that time he looks around at every single detail of the kitchen and its contents except for Alfred’s eyes. Finally, he says, “I could… go with you. If you want.”

Alfred is surprised by that, but not unhappily so. “That would be nice.” He glances guiltily toward the phone. “I was thinking of maybe putting a bird on it.”

Bruce surprises Alfred by snorting. When Alfred looks up again, Bruce is making a pinched face and looking at the ceiling, obviously trying to suppress laughter. “Jason would hate that, Alfred,” he points out.

“Yes, well, it isn’t actually _for_ him, is it?” Alfred grouses. “He’s never going to see it. He obviously had no idea this was coming, or he would have said… I mean you’ve never even said what you would… Thomas and Martha…” And Alfred doesn’t realize that he’s crying until Bruce steps forward and pulls him into a tight hug, and Alfred feels like everything has gone wrong because he is supposed to be the strong one, and everything has been so very, very wrong for years and years.

“I’m sorry,” Bruce whispers as he clutches at Alfred tightly. “I’m so sorry I let this happen.”

* * *

Alfred expects to see Talia again. He doesn’t know if she’s going to harass Batman or Bruce. If Bruce will come home bloody or intoxicated, furious or horny. But he expects it, whatever it is, to come. 

What he doesn't expect is to be woken up at four in the morning three days later by a breeze from a window he didn't leave open. The cold thought runs through him that his own death would be an excellent way for Talia to worm her way back into Bruce's arms, and he immediately flips on the bedside lamp and looks about the room. The invader is made immediately clear in the hunched shape perched at the foot of the bed (specifically, on top of the footboard), staring at him with yellow-green eyes. 

“Oh good, you're awake,” says Selina Kyle. 

“What the bloody hell－?”

“So, you're basically his dad, right?” she continues on, heedless of the old man's confused panic, speaking as though this were a casual conversation. “You know him the best of anyone?”

“Is… is this the introduction to a kidnapping?” he asks. 

“What?” Selina, to her credit, looks genuinely affronted at the suggestion. “No, it's the introduction to a question.”

Alfred scowls up at her. “I'm sorry, I only schedule interviews for the daylight hours,” he tells her. “You'll have to come back later.”

Those eerie jade eyes narrow at him disapprovingly. “Why does he think I was here when I wasn't?” she demands. 

“... What?”

She rolls her eyes at him and expounds, “He seems to think he bedded me several nights ago. I know for a fact that he did not. Why would he think this?”

… Shit. Bruce must have clued in that he'd had a woman in his bed, but assumed by the lack of her morning presence that it was the same stray who usually comes and goes from their home as she pleases. 

“I can see you've already thought of something, but if you take much longer to inform me of the thought, I shall have to assume you're lying to me, which I won't appreciate,” she informs him. 

Alfred sighs. There's no point to lying anyway; Selina always gets what she wants eventually. “It was Talia that he brought home.”

If he had thought that she seemed offended before, she was absolutely incensed now. He imagines he can see her back arching and fur rising along her neck. Her nails scratch at the wood of his footboard. “You assume he can't tell us apart?” she hisses. 

Alfred's stomach swims at the memory of the truth. He looks away. “He doesn't remember,” he confesses. “I… I waited until he was in deep sleep, and then I escorted her out at gunpoint. It wasn't until morning, when he had no idea, that I realized she must have… done something.”

Alfred is _almost_ certain he didn't imagine that low, feline growl. “You think she drugged her way into his bed?”

“I believe I have cause to suspect such, yes.”

“She went to all that trouble to get back in his good graces and then she let you just see her out without a fight?”

“It would seem so.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Exactly.” Alfred sighs again, sits up straighter, and addresses her directly this time. “Since we are for once interacting as peers who share the same concern, Ms. Kyle, I do feel compelled to inform you that I am in fear of this plan of hers which I cannot fathom and thus cannot prepare for.”

Selina’s eyes drift to the door, and her frown deepens. “To do this now, when he's grieving… I could stab her in her snobby fucking face.”

Alfred can't help snorting at that. “Take a number,” he grumbles. 

She squats there on his footboard for several minutes as she ponders his door. Finally, she says, “We're agreed we have to keep her away from him. So, I'll patrol the city for her. You patrol the house and grounds. Call me if anything comes up. I'll be here right away.”

This surprised him. “You assume I have your number?” he scoffs. 

“You have my name,” she says with a shrug. “I'm in the book.” She finally hops down off the footboard with all the grace of a common house cat, which is to say with a very loud thud. She pauses there, then faces him again and says, “And you should call Dickie. They may be fighting, but there's no way he'd stand for this. You don't have to tell him everything just… let him know she's around.”

And then she's gone out the window.

* * *

“You're sure she was seen in Gotham?” Dick Grayson’s voice ask over the phone. 

Alfred rubs at his neck. “I have it on good authority she was set to use the… situation to her advantage,” he says. 

“What does Bruce have to say about it?”

“He… hasn't noticed her.” It isn't quite a lie. 

Dick sighs heavily on the other end of the phone. “Well, if she was here, she's finished whatever she was up to already,” he tells Alfred. “I've been scouring this city for her for 48 hours, and there's been not a peep, and I need to get back to my team.”

“You're sure you can't－?”

“I'm sorry, Alfred. I can't do this,” Dick says with a voice so pained that it makes Alfred's chest hurt. “Maybe if Bruce actually wanted help so that I didn't have to do this while also avoiding him. But I… I really hope he doesn't ask because… Look, I know Jason's routines, okay? His routes. The buildings that remind me of him because I've seen him run across their roofs. Sometimes, when I'm up there, I think I can still see him in the corner of my eye, flitting across the city, and I cant－ I _can't_ be in Gotham right now. I'm sorry. I can't stay. I'm sorry.”

“... I'm sorry, too,” Alfred whispers. “Goodnight, Master Richard.”

“Goodnight, Alfred.”


	2. One Year After Jason's Death

It's rare but not unheard of for someone to ring the doorbell of Wayne Manor without first ringing the gate. Usually, it means that this guest has, for some reason, decided to jump the fence and go on foot and yet is not trying to sneak about unnoticed. Usually because they thought they were less likely to be turned away from the door than from the gate. Once, when Bruce was 15, it meant the gate had been left open. Never before had either of these things happened in the middle of the goddamn night. Sure, he's had to see in guests in pyjamas and gown before, but to date it had not been for gate-jumpers.

Alfred opens the door to the sight of a young man with a small backpack slung over his shoulder, early enough in his teen years that puberty still hadn't come on properly. He was white, dark haired, blue-eyed, and standing akimbo while glaring directly up at Alfred in an obvious attempt to look more confident than he was. Definitely a gate-jumper.

“Yes?” Alfred asks.

“I'm here to talk to Bruce Wayne,” says the boy.

Alfred glowers down at him. “Young man, do you have any idea what hour it is?” he demands.

“Three twenty-seven,” the boy reports. “Just after he's returned from from his Batman patrol.”

Alfred forces himself to smirk. That's the tactic they always use when someone notices similarities between Bruce and Batman; to treat it as a joke. Once, several years ago, Bruce had even attended a costume party as Batman. The costume had been almost as good as the real thing, but had been carefully tailored to subtly distort Bruce's shape, making it appear to all the world as though he couldn't have filled out the real costume in the same way Batman did. “Is that so?”

There's a flicker in the boy's mask of confidence, but it's a flicker of annoyance, not doubt. That could be a problem. “Yeah,” he says. “It is.”

“Then I suppose you best come in,” Alfred tells him.

It takes a while to get the boy － he says his name is Tim Drake － seated long enough for Alfred to actually go find Bruce. Every time he turns his back on the kid, Tim tries to sneak off. Luckily, the house is _very_ heavily monitored with security access panels hidden everywhere, so Alfred is very easily able to check if Tim is still where he left him and then go track him down when he inevitably isn't.

Eventually, Alfred is able to convince Tim that he (in Tim's words) “must have detachable eyeballs or something”, and Alfred is able to get all the way to the specific grandfather clock in the specific downstairs study without having to backtrack. He checks the security one last time － Tim has produced a laptop but is still sitting where Alfred left him － and then pulls the clock aside and descends into the Batcave.

Sitting at his deck of computer screens with his cowl down, Bruce looks back over the sore shoulder he’d been massaging at when he hears Alfred come down the stairs. “Couldn’t sleep?” he asks. Bruce’s whole body language is coiled and restless and tight with dissatisfaction.

Alfred folds his arms across his chest and scowls down at him. “There’s a young man here to see you,” he informs his charge, the master of the house. “He was rather insistent.”

Bruce’s tension immediately amps up to near-rigor. Finally, he asks, “Drake?”

Alfred raises an eyebrow at this. “You’ve met?”

“He’s been hounding me for over a week. _Both_ of me!” Bruce exclaims. “I wasted half of my patrol tonight just trying to shake him!”

“Well, you did a wonderful job,” says Alfred. “What did you tell him?”

“‘No,’ obviously,” Bruce says with a roll of the eyes.

That surprises Alfred. “How much is he asking for?”

Bruce barks out a harsh laugh at that. “God, if only it was _that_ simple,” he says. “He’s demanding that I－”

“Nice digs you’ve got here,” Tim interrupts from the top of the stairs, looking for all the world like the cat that caught the canary. “That clock is so 1940s mystery comics, though. Man, how old _are you_?”

Bruce seethes up from his chair in a flash of anger that has Alfred reacting immediately. “Whoa! Bruce!” he interrupts, pressing back on that tank of a chest as though he had a hope in hell of holding Bruce back if Bruce wasn’t willing to be held back.

Bruce stays but otherwise ignores Alfred, shouting at the boy, “ _Get! Out!_ ”

Tim snorts. “Heck no. You need me!”

Oh.

Oh dear.

Alfred interrupts the argument to delay it while he gets his bearings, asking Tim, “How were you able to follow me when I made sure you were still sitting in the conference room?”

“Easy,” Tim says, rolling his eyes. He pulls his laptop out of his bag and waves it triumphantly. “It was pretty obvious that you were using security cameras to make sure I stayed put. So I got in the system and tracked _you_ instead.” He’s grinning. “And dude, you have _got_ to put some effort into your security; that was _way_ too easy.”

Bruce’s anger ebbs slightly in the wake of his surprise. “Are you kidding me? Batgirl and I spent an entire month installing that system!”

“When? Last century?”

“Seven years ago!”

Tim’s eyebrow goes up. “So… yes. Last century.”

“You think you know everything!” Bruce snarls. “You have no idea the risks involved!”

“I keep telling you that I _do_!” Tim bites back. He puts the laptop away, serious now, and descends a few more steps, and Bruce tenses even more behind Alfred. “ _Dick Grayson_ is how I figured it out! Years ago, when I was a kid.” Even Alfred rolls his eyes at that. “The flying Graysons go down, you adopt him, and suddenly Batman has a new sidekick wearing Grayson colors using Grayson acrobatics. Batman is not an acrobat. It’s so… so… _obvious!_ ” Tim exclaims. “And then, Dick moves out and Robin disappears with the Titans, and you get like… a replacement son or something?”

“That’s _not_ what－”

“And then there’s a _new_ Robin that is definitely _not_ an acrobat,” Tim continues. “He fights like a thug. Like someone who figured out how to fight on the street; someone like _Jason_ who was adopted from exactly those circumstances. And then Batgirl just disappears right off the radar without warning. And then Jason dies, and Robin disappears.” Tim makes another step forward, and Alfred is really, really not sure what’s going to happen next. “So, yeah! I’ve _been telling you_! I know! I know what happens to Robins. To heroes. I know being a vigilante is dangerous. If this was about chasing thrills or something, I would’ve just gone off and done it without bothering you! But the part of the story _you_ keep ignoring is _after_ Jason, when you apparently go absolutely _batshit!_ … Excuse the pun.”

Alfred risks a glance back at a surprisingly guilty-looking but still angry Bruce. “You’ve what?”

Tim continues, “I’m not here because _I_ want to be a hero; I’m here because you _need_ a Robin and no one else is signing up. It’s been a year, and everything is falling apart. Everything that you built. Together. With them. And you’re throwing it all away because what happened sucks, and I’m not saying it doesn’t, but this city needs you at your best and you need a Robin to keep you in line. I know there’s a reason the sidekick to the bat is the bird － you need sunlight to counter your darkness. You need someone who reminds you what you’re fighting for. And I can do it. I _will_ do it.”

Bruce’s fists tighten and release repeatedly. He swallows, starts to say something, then swallows again. Alfred is really not sure whether Bruce is about to scream or cry (Bruce probably doesn’t know, either), but he knows that Bruce doesn’t want to do either of those things in front of the kid.

Alfred sighs. “Alright, that’s enough, young man,” he says, heading back upstairs. “It’s far past your bedtime. You’ve had your say; now move along.” As he reaches Tim on the stairs, he makes a shooing gesture.

Tim gawks at him in disbelief. “I’m not just going to－!” But he’s interrupted when Alfred delivers a swift kick to his shins then hooks an arm around Tim’s small waist and hauls him up the stairs like a very angry suitcase.

“Goodnight, Master Bruce,” he calls from the top of the stairs, to assure Bruce that he won’t be back down, and he closes the clock behind him.

* * *

“Wait, he figured it out because he’s a _Flying Graysons_ fan?” Barbara Gordon giggles from behind her hand. “I can’t wait to tell Dick.”

Alfred sits across from her in the far corner of some trendy café she swore had the most inattentive waiters in Gotham but supposedly had decent food. She was right about the service; it had taken him half an hour to order a salad. He couldn’t say whether she was right about the food as he still hadn’t received it yet. He’s pretty sure the booth closest to the bar has a mob kid sitting at it. By now, Batman had dismantled most of Gotham’s mafia, but their miscreant family members still hung around, stinking up the city. “Don’t,” he tells her. “He’ll have an aneurysm.”

She pauses in sipping her Coke, then leans back with a frown. “Yeah… true,” she admits quietly. “So, how much is he asking?” She prods the ice in her glass with a straw and takes another sip.

Alfred double checks the continued lack of attention toward their table, and answers, “He’s demanding that he be allowed to become Robin.”

She chokes, quickly grabbing up her napkin to wipe her face before demanding, “ _What_?”

Alfred sighs heavily. “The whole way he went about it reminded me something of you, honestly,” he says. “So… I was hoping perhaps you could see a way to dissuade him.”

Barbara frowns. “Yeah, okay, if he’s really anything like me? You can’t,” she tells him. “There’s nothing back then that could have convinced me to back down. I mean, Bruce coulda told my dad, but that would’ve only been a temporary measure. But… yeah, that’s all I can think of. His dad’s not a cop, is he?”

“Investment banker,” says Alfred. “Apparently, this offers Tim a lot of time unsupervised.”

Barbara sighs heavily. “I mean, back when I started, it was unthinkable that a child sidekick could be seriously threatened. Even now, no one thought Joker would go directly for Robin,” she says. “It’s still being talked about in the League. No one can wrap their brains around it. No one’s sure how careful they should be or if child heroes should be sidelined altogether.”

“Yes, but Drake knows, and he still won’t be deterred,” Alfred complains.

They pause their conversation when Barbara notices the waiter approaching with their orders. The food, as it turns out, is surprisingly good, despite the fact that they brought Alfred the _wrong_ salad. Never doubt Barbara Gordon when she says she knows the perfect place to discuss Batman topics in public.

“To be honest, Alfred,” Barbara tells him at last, “if I knew then what I know now with the experiences I’ve had, with everything we’ve lost… I still wouldn’t have changed my mind about Batgirl. Maybe… Maybe this _is_ what Drake needs.”

“He claims it’s not about him,” Alfred mumbles, picking at his salad with a dour expression. “He claims it’s about Bruce. Says Batman _needs_ a Robin.”

Barbara snorts in amusement. “So he is like me then.”

Alfred looks up from his food and meets her eyes evenly. “He _says_ Bruce is going crazy.”

The pause of her hesitation is far too long to mean anything good. She sets her sandwich down, finishes chewing, and says, “So you haven’t seen the news, then?”

He shakes his head. “Batman stories give me nightmares,” he confesses. “What’s been happening?”

She bites her lower lip and looks away, very obviously considering not telling him. In the end, she says, “He’s been increasingly reckless since Jason’s death. I imagine you know how he handled the Joker thing, but that only settled him briefly. He’s gone AWOL from the League a few times, but the more obvious evidence is the arrests. The criminals he turns over to the police have more and more often had to be taken directly to the hospital. Last month, the hospitalization rate was 83%.”

Alfred swears under his breath.

With a grimace, Barbara admits, “It’s bad press to be associated with him, right now. We just got police violence down to the lowest rate it’s been since well before Dad was a patrolman, so the Union’s using it as an excuse to press Dad to take the signal down, and… honestly? Right now? I can’t tell him it’s a bad idea.”

“And you’re certain that… that it’s not just a coincidence?” Alfred presses, perhaps a bit desperately. “That there simply haven’t just been more violent criminals to take down? People who escalate in a fight to the point that they have to be… immobilized.”

Barbara scowls and rubs at her neck. “A couple months ago, Supes tried to talk to him about it,” she says. “He hit him in the face.”

Alfred is aghast. “ _Superman_ hit Bruce in the face?” he demands.

“No, _Bruce_ hit _Superman_ in the face,” she corrects.

Alfred blinks at her. “With… his…?”

“Fist.”

“... -shaped missile?”

Barbara smirks a little at the forced joke. “No, Alfred, with his fist-shaped _fist_.”

“But… isn’t Superman basically a brick wall?” he clarifies. Though already, he's remembering Bruce's broken wrist of a few months ago and the obvious lies that were told about it.

She rolls her eyes. “Superman makes brick walls look like sponge cake.”

“ _Christ_ ,” Alfred mumbles.

“We’re literally all of us concerned,” she admits. “The League _and_ the GCPD. Hell, all of Gotham.”

“And no one said a damn thing to me?” says Alfred.

Barbara shakes her head and shrugs. “What are you supposed to do?” she asks. “What can any of us do?”

Alfred reminds her, “Well, according to Drake, we should be tagging on a new Robin to weigh him down.”

Barbara shrugs again. “I don’t know, Alfred,” she admits. “Yeah, Dick was the sun to his moon, the bird to his bat, but… He got into this because of the trauma of losing his parents. And now that Jason’s death has dug that trauma in even deeper… I can’t say another Robin would fix that. I don’t think anything’s gonna fix that.” She pokes at her long forgotten lunch and suggests, “Maybe, instead of convincing Drake to give up Robin, we should be convincing Bruce to give up Batman.”

Years ago, Alfred would have been joyous at the thought. But now… He looks to the mob kid in the corner. The sparse remains of an almost-forgotten legacy. “And what happens to this city without him?” he wonders.

“Nightwing can take it,” Barbara assures him. “We can get a team together, even. There’s plenty of spare heroes in need of new territory.”

Alfred glowers at his salad. “Spare heroes,” he repeats. “Right.”

* * *

Alfred pulls the grandfather clock aside, descends the stairs into the Batcave, and then waits there patiently with his arms folded behind him. He needs Bruce to initiate this conversation or else it will be read as an attack. Besides, for him to initiate it, he’d have to actually know what he wanted to say.

Bruce, sitting again at the computer console but this time out of costume as he’s concentrating on research instead of preparing for battle, grows increasingly tense as the silence stretches on until, at last, he’s compelled to break it. “I don’t want him,” he growls, low and terse and unquestioning.

“Yes, I know, sir,” says Alfred.

“ _You_ would have to be crazy to want him,” Bruce adds for good measure.

Alfred barely keeps from laughing at that, and Bruce glances back at him skeptically. “I didn’t want any of this,” Alfred says with honesty.

Guilty, Bruce looks away back to the computer. “So what did you come down for?” he asks. His tone is flat, attempting passive while still on edge. Does he ever come off the edge these days? Alfred can’t remember the last time Bruce smiled. Has it been an entire year since the last time he felt anything other than anger and grief and guilt?

“I was wondering,” Alfred says a bit slowly, to give himself a bit of time to workout what he actually wants to ask, “if you had a plan.”

“Which plan?” asks Bruce because of course there are always multiple plans.

“What you’re going to do when GCPD inevitably caves to the pressure to _arrest you_.”

Bruce bristles and turns to Alfred again. “What are you talking about?” he demands.

“You know what I’m talking about,” Alfred says with absolute certainty. He may have been ignorant of certain facts － perhaps purposefully － until earlier that day, but Bruce has always had a disturbingly perceptive clarity. “Did you think you could hide it from me forever? This self-destructive self-indulgent spiral of yours?” Alfred bites with maybe a little more venom than he intended but not more than is necessary. “You keep this up, they're going to have to, and you know it. Is that what you want? Do you think it will make you feel better?”

Bruce looks away, sulking and guilty, but doesn't attempt an answer.

Alfred sighs heavily and continues, “The way I see it, you have a few choices. One, keep beating the hell out of anyone who angers you, until you're finally held accountable like any other street thug, your identity is revealed on arrest, and the Wayne legacy burns to the ground right along with Batman.”

Bruce folds in on himself a bit, but still keeps that tense anger, that sullen resolution, and doesn't answer.

“Two, you can somehow find a way to resurrect in yourself the man you once were, a man of clarity and strict moral ideals, perhaps you could mend your reputation and continue on without fear of being treated as the same criminals you capture.

“Or three, you can retire, become Bruce Wayne full time for the first time in nearly twenty years, and let this city break someone else. You could give me back my son.”

When Bruce finally meets his eyes again, it's with the sad, lost, uncertain gaze of a ten-year-old boy who has lost everything but one thing. “And which would you have me do?” he asks quietly.

“I don't know,” Alfred admits. “Which is why I really hoped to hear that you had a plan.”


	3. Three Years After Jason’s Passing

Alfred is washing dishes in the kitchen (by hand, and he absolutely hates Dick Grayson for getting him into this habit when they have a perfectly serviceable dishwasher － or “whirlpool of muck” as it was described by the boy who would boil the dishes if you didn’t force him not to) when he hears the soft footsteps of Tim Drake trying to be surreptitious behind him. “Did you need something, Mr. Drake?” Alfred asks lightly.

Tim makes an embarrassed sort of squawk and then mumbles, “SorryIdidntwanttointerrupt.”

Of course, the manner in which he says it tells Alfred that he definitely needs to turn his full attention to Tim, so he finishes the plate in his hands, places it on the (also recently washed) drying rack, dries his hands on the nearby kitchen towel, and turns to Tim. Tim is standing only a few feet away, barely preventing himself from squirming, not meeting Alfred’s eyes, and holding a manilla envelope behind his back. A few printed pages threaten to tumble out of it. “Alright,” he says patiently. “What did you do?”

Tim still doesn’t produce the folder yet, but he squirms a bit more and says (while looking at the fridge), “Okay, so you know about how someone shot up one of the Greek mafia’s places last week? And we’re investigating it?”

“Yes,” says Alfred. “Though I don’t understand what it’s to do with me.”

Tim’s gaze goes from fridge to high cupboards above and behind Alfred. “Well, see, Bruce told me to run the DNA, so I did. And the program finally finished running. And I have a partial match.” He holds out the manilla folder to Alfred as some sort of proof.

Alfred raises an eyebrow at that. “Isn’t that good?”

Tim tilts his head to the side and admits, “I have a partial match… for Bruce.”

Alfred is fairly proud of the acting skills that keep his face stern instead of amused. “I see,” he says. “You contaminated the sample and want me to tell him so you don’t have to face his irritation directly.”

Tim bows his head and thrusts the folder up higher to Alfred as though a proffering to a god. “Pleeeeeease?” he begs childishly. Tim is quite obviously the very spoiled child of a wealthy family by the theatrics he undergoes whenever he’s trying to avoid responsibility and/or to receive something he should not be given.

Alfred forces himself to remain stoic. “And what do I get in return?” he asks.

Tim quickly looks around and then offers, “I’ll do the dishes?”

“Absolutely not,” says Alfred. “You’re terrible at them.”

Tim grimaces, insulted. “Hey, at least I don’t waste water like Grayson.”

Alfred has to roll his eyes at that. “Yes, because under-cleaning them is so very preferable to over-cleaning them.”

“Well… what do you want?” Tim asks in that huffy, whining voice so familiar to teenagers.

Alfred considers for a moment. It would have to be a hard bargain or else Tim will come around to him every time he’s in trouble, but not an impossible bargain in case Tim is genuinely having anxiety about the issue. It would also have to be something that could pass for training, which is the punishment that Bruce would have given him. Manual labor would fit the bill, but it needs to be something that doesn’t need much skill. “You could mow the lawns,” Alfred decides.

Tim balks, “But there’s so much of it!”

“I’ll allow you to take up to a week to complete it, and request that you stay up to five feet away from all the borders; the gardener will mow those instead. I’ll instruct him to show you how to use the mower if you don’t know,” Alfred tells him. “Or you could handle this matter with Bruce yourself.”

Tim considers his options. “... Where is the gardener?”

“He works six to nine in the morning on weekdays,” Alfred informs him.

Tim’s jaw drops. “I have to do it before _school_?!”

“ _Or_ you could take that file to Bruce yourself,” Alfred reminds him, pointing to the manilla envelope.

Tim considers again, but eventually sighs in defeat. “Yeah, okay,” he grumbles. And Alfred thinks he’s gotten Tim to accept responsibility until Tim leaves the envelope on the counter on his way out. Odd. He must really expect Bruce to be angry, but if the sample was _that_ vital, Bruce would have run it himself.

Nonetheless, Alfred unties his apron, folds it carefully over a barstool by the counter, and then picks up the envelope and heads down to the Batcave. Bruce looks up from where he’d been investigating something through a microscope at a science station on the second tier. “Alfred?” he says. “Where’s Tim?”

“I believe he went home to avoid you,” Alfred informs him. He sets the envelope down on Bruce’s table. “He contaminated the DNA sample he was running, and seemed to think you’d be quite angry about it.”

Bruce rolls his eyes. “Irritated, not angry. This is the fourteenth time; I’ve learned to take multiple samples,” he tells Alfred.

Alfred shrugs. “Well, he seems to think otherwise as he agreed to mow the lawns in trade,” he says.

Bruce blinks in surprise. And then he laughs. “Alfred, he’s not afraid of me,” he tells his former guardian. “Tim was raised in a penthouse apartment; I don’t think he’s ever mowed a lawn in his life and thus he has no idea what he agreed to.”

Alfred shrugs again but doesn’t hide his amused smirk this time. “Well, then, I suppose this will do him good.”

“Not arguing there.” Bruce steps away from the desk briefly to escort the folder to a nearby garbage can. “He’s starting to give himself quite the fictional criminal record.”

Alfred laughs at that. “Well, he says this time it was a partial match to you.”

Bruce suddenly stops midway to the garbage. He turns back to Alfred. “What?”

Alfred has no idea what would be so alarming about that. Perhaps Bruce misheard? “I said that he said the contaminated sample resulted in a partial match to you.”

Bruce shakes his head. Looks down at the envelope with obvious confusion. “That’s not possible,” he says. “That’s not how partial matches work.” He goes back to his desk to open up the file and look over the contents. “A partial match happens when either the genetic sample or the sample it’s being compared to are incomplete. DNA breaks down pretty quickly outside the body. But my sample in the computer is obviously complete. And when I logged this one it was about 92% complete.” Looking over the file, he nods to himself, probably confirming that this is still the case.

Alfred stares at him, confused. “I’m sorry… Are you saying that _you’ve_ been murdering the Greek mafia?”

“What? No.” Bruce looks back up at him. He looks away, chews his lip. Then he sighs, meets Alfred’s gaze and admits, “I can’t be _totally_ sure yet, but… it looks like what Tim uncovered was a _paternity_ match. If he’d let the data finish compiling, he’d’ve probably gotten maternity as well.”

Alfred stands there blinking for he doesn’t know how long. Finally, he says, “I’m sorry, _what_?”

“Alfred…”

“Why are you so collected?” Alfred demands. “You’re the one so hyper-obsessed with family that you can’t resist adopting random orphans － or snotty teenagers with their own damned families － and yet, for some reason, _I’m_ the only one concerned that you may have _a child_ out there?”

“I’m concerned!” Bruce shouts back. “Of course, I’m concerned! This sample is from a _crime scene_ , Alfred! But I have to run the test again, and recheck the video, and find her identity and her family and－”

“Oh my god, you _knew_ ,” Alfred realizes.

“Alfred, I－”

“You _knew_ , and you didn’t _tell me_?” he demands. “You left this child to someone else? Some random stranger in _Gotham_ , of all places?!”

“That is _not_ what happened!” Bruce snarls, offended. “You－ Argh!” He takes a moment to calm himself, tightening and releasing his fists repeatedly. Finally, he says, “Will you just sit down and let me talk?”

Alfred seats himself in the recently vacated office chair by the lab table and glowers up at his former charge pointedly.

Bruce sighs, runs a hand down his face, takes a moment to collect his thoughts. Finally, he leans against the table and says, “Back when Selina and I first started… getting heated, we weren’t exactly honest with ourselves or each other about what was happening, and thus we didn’t make very careful preparations for those incidents in which we…” He makes a vague gesture. “... inevitably got carried away. And we barely knew each other, miscommunicated about everything under the sun, and so… when she apparently got pregnant, she hid it from me.

“She thought that she wanted to keep the baby, but as the expected birth date approached, she realized how ill-prepared and overwhelmed she was. And that she didn’t want this child to live the kind of childhood she had, or even the kind of life she was currently living. So, she birthed a baby girl anonymously with the help of a midwife and turned her over to a church.

“Years later, when sexual intercourse had given way to actual intimacy and even occasional friendship, she came to understand that I would want to know. So she told me. Of course, I wanted to bring the child home or at least know her. But, by then the trail was cold. Selina wasn’t even entirely sure which church it was, and none of the Gotham churches that offer that service kept good records,” he explains. “There was no child in any of the orphanages that matched us, so I had to assume that she found a family that would love her.”

“But you didn’t tell _me_ ,” Alfred says, genuinely hurt.

Bruce sighs, rubs at his neck. “I’m sorry,” he says, quietly. “I should have. I just… it hurt, you know? I didn’t want to talk about it. And then, turn around, years have passed and I still hadn’t said anything, and… Well, I would say that it was because I didn’t think it was worth saying, but really… I just didn’t want to face that I’d failed this kid.”

Alfred made a disapproving noise and rolled his eyes. “You’re absurd,” he accuses. “You didn’t even know.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Bruce says with a small, forced smile. “It just… that’s how it feels.”

“So what do you do now?”

Bruce shrugs. “Like I said, I have to run the sample again to be absolutely sure － though how else Tim would’ve gotten this result, I don’t know,” he says. “And I’ve got to start a whole new investigation on just her identity. And I’ve definitely got to talk to Selina…” He glances to Alfred again and says, “Look, I think… I think perhaps we shouldn’t tell Tim. Or anyone. Not until Selina and I have worked this out, whatever’s happened.”

Alfred nods. It feels wrong, to keep this secret, but Bruce and Selina need the privacy to investigate and come to a decision without interference. “Just…” he says quietly. “Just make sure she’s okay.”

* * *

Over the following weeks, Alfred has not been able to stop thinking about Selina’s daughter. About what she might look like now. What her personality is like. What her parents are like. He runs a million different scenarios through his head every waking minute and many of his sleeping minutes as well.

None of it prepares him for Helena Bertinelli, her fierce eyes, or her bloody sneer.

“Well?” he asks Selina Kyle from where they sit observing from a catwalk high above and to the side of where Helena sits, tied to a chair, while Batman and Robin interrogate her about her activities.

Selina lowers the binoculars she’s using to get a more detailed look without giving away their position, and she frowns at the scene below. “Well, she definitely doesn’t look like a baby,” she whispers.

Alfred groans and rolls his eyes. “But does she resemble you or Bruce?”

Selina shrugs. “See, I’ve never really understood that,” she says. “The whole ‘she's got your eyes’ thing or ‘he's got your cheekbones.’ Eyes are eyes, bones are bones. Rarely does the kid look clone-like enough to really pinpoint it.”

“Oh, give me that,” Alfred hisses, and he grabs the binoculars from her and checks the view for himself.

He doesn’t know what they’re saying, but Helena’s all vicious confidence. Her entire mouth and chin are smeared red from the bloody nose Robin gave her. Alfred can tell even from this distance that Batman is extremely uncomfortable, and Helena is reading it as do-gooder hesitation. When she turns her head to taunt Robin, Alfred is able to lower the binoculars and hand them back to Selina. “She’s nearly identical to you in profile.”

“You think?” Selina quickly looks again and frowns. “I don’t see it.”

“Well, how often do you see your own profile?”

“... Good point.” Selina lowers the binoculars again, pulls her knees to her chin. “I fucked up, didn’t I?”

Alfred considers his answer then admits, “Well, I admit I’m a bit biased on the subject, obviously preferring she’d ended up with _us_. But… the way Bruce tells it, the decision was quite reasonable from your perspective at the time.”

Selina curls even further in on herself, her guilt making her feel vulnerable. “I was just trying to do what was right,” she mumbles into her knees.

“I know.” Uncertainly, Alfred puts his hand on her back to comfort her, simply leaving it there for indication as to her level of comfort. Instead, she refuses to acknowledge it.

“Did he tell you about her?” Selina asks quietly. “How she got like this? She had everything I wished her to have and more… and then it was taken away.”

Alfred nods. “Switch billionaire philanthropists for a mafia king and his wife, and the stories are virtually identical.”

“I suppose it’s _my_ genes that turned her into a killer,” Selina whines. “He’d never even think of doing this.”

Alfred snorts. “Oh, yes, he did,” he bites back, surprising her. She looks to him with wide eyes, and he feels it probably safe to tell her, “When he was a child, he fantasized about it on a regular basis. That’s why he got himself trained in so many special arts. But it was the childish fantasy of a boy who’s never faced such a decision. I knew. I warned him. Every single time. And when he found himself the opportunity to follow through on the fantasy… he didn’t. Because, luckily, he had listened to me.”

Selina’s watching him with rapt attention, so he continues, “Look, if you can get the trigger pulled once, each time next is a lot easier,” he tells her. “It’s so very easy to convince yourself that you’ve stepped off the moral precipice and now there’s nowhere to go but down. You’re a killer now, so that’s all you can be.”

“Is it…” Selina whispers, hesitates, then tries again. “Do you think it’s possible to catch someone who has fallen off that precipice?” she asks. “Before they hit the rocky bottom?”

“Yes, of course, there is no bottom,” says Alfred. “There is no precipice. The fall is imagined, Selina; morality doesn’t work like that.”

She looks back out at the interrogation below her and pouts, sullen and thoughtful.

Then, she leans in toward him and buts her head against his shoulder. Taking the cue, he pulls her into a side hug, and she settles herself in against his side as they watch the scene unfold. Eventually, she says, “I wish I’d known him better, back then.”


End file.
